Theory of Relativity
by thedutchessai
Summary: Eve's plan was simple: case the apartment, break in, steal the grimoire and then get out of Brooklyn unseen. A relationship with the witch who owned the book was never a part of the equation. Chapter 3: The second time I saw Mirella Karl Marsten was there. Inspite of everything I considered her a friend and thought our last meeting was some kind of fluke. It hadn't been.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: A story idea that was floating around in my head. This story involves Eve in a romantic relationship with an original female character, so don't read if you're in any way opposed to that idea. Eve and Mirella just wound up meeting each other without me thinking about it or planning it, and I delayed posting this because I wanted to portray their relationship in a way that was natural, respectful, and true to both women. Constructive Criticism is welcome. This can be read without reading my other story Mira.  
My visual reference for Mirella is Magareth Made.

**I own nothing except for Mirella and any other original characters, everything else including Eve Levine are property of Kelley Armstrong.**

It was her. Dressed in a mini skirt and a black blazer. Long, chestnut, just-flat-ironed hair pooled into a loose bun to survive her commute, and a pair of drugstore sunglasses hiding a semi-permanent bitch face. After two hours, a powdered donut and half a cup of stale burnt coffee Mirella Agnello finally left her fifth floor walk up in Gravesend like she did every Tuesday to pick up an extra shift at some bar in Staten Island. I'd been casing her apartment for weeks, learning her schedule down to when she'd probably need to buy tampons again (another three weeks), and what she ate for breakfast (toasted Portuguese roll with butter from the Bodega washed down with a carton of Tropicana orange juice). Finally, I was ready to make my move.

Apparently so was Mirella, and one hour later she was pressing a wad of quilted paper towels into my hand. Oddly enough they were the type with those horrible, pixelated pastel renderings of strawberries and citrus fruits with their names translated into English and Spanish stamped onto every sheet. I frowned at them, they frowned back, and with a quick sigh she gently lifted my hand to my nose, the one that was spurting out blood faster than a jimmied open fire hydrant.

"So, I was thinking, you can make this up to me, yes?"

I mustered up all the authority I could while being muffled by a muzzle of Bounty paper towels.  
"I thought you breaking my nose pretty much made us even."

"It's not broken exactly, it's really just an uncomplicated fracture."

At first I thought she was playing me. She had to be. But her face was so incredibly serious that I would've found it funny on anyone else who hadn't just assaulted me. She hoisted herself up on the kitchen counter and after a series of rattling and glasses shuffling she pulled out two porcelain espresso cups, and all but ignored me as she swept around the kitchen. Rummaging through packages coasters and sugar spoons.

"Cream, or black?"

"Excuse me?"

"For your coffee."

"Look I appreciate you letting me get away with just a broken nose-"

She raised her eyebrow and I immediately corrected myself. "An uncomplicated fracture, but I really don't want any damn coffee. I have things to do."

"Ah I see, I did also. I was going to do the laundry but then I got burglarized." She shrugged. " Plans change Eve. It's natural."

She wasn't crazy. No. Mirella Agnello was absolutely infuriating. And worst of all she had somewhat of a point.

"Give me the cream then."

She smiled. "You can wait in the living room. Be careful on the sofa, yes ?"

I stomped off to the couch wondering if I was on some type of acid trip. I hadn't expected this. It wasn't every day that I robbed a gorgeous woman and she forced me into coffee.

Her living room was soft. All whites and light blues with sage sachets in pink satin bags everywhere. Pictures on the side table showed a girl probably around Savannah's age with dark hair, bright green eyes, and Mirella's tanned, dark olive complexion. The kind that women spent hours turning orange in tanning booths trying to get. And then a younger Mirella with a coppery redhead, mother and daughter identified only by their identical smirks.

I'd been too distracted by Mirella's fist connecting with my face to notice before, but as soon as I sat down I could feel the wards in her living room. The symbols vibrating and humming from their etchings into all the doorways and window panes, and their careful placement beneath the area rugs. From where they stood as silent loyal centennials standing watch beneath the floor boards. She was the one who'd made them. I could tell. I zoomed in on it, drowning out the sound of coffee and cream being poured into cups. I focused on how it felt when she had touched my hand in the kitchen, the wards had that same beautifully golden pulse. Some witches' magic felt like static electricity, others like a slight breeze. But Mirella, her magic was like being caught between two magnets.

She set the tray down on the coffee table, and my eyes opened.

"Your wards."

She sat down next to me with her long legs crossed at the ankle.

"Mn" she pressed her lips together "I wish I could say I put them up just for you but that isn't the case."

"They're blood wards, some of them."

They were officially banned by most covens except some old sects in Europe. They required time, patience, and a skill level that most witches simply didn't have. She may have been drinking espresso with more grace than I had witnessed from any one in my life and attempting a friendly chat but I knew right then that I had dodged a bullet. Mirella was strong and she had the home team advantage. I could've been a dead woman if she wasn't so eccentric.

"They're impressive." I'd wanted to say beautiful. My eyes settled on her back-seam stockings, where the hell did you even buy those nowadays?

Her lips turned up just slightly from behind her cup, and I felt my stomach clench.

"Your coffee Eve."

I lifted it from the blue toile tray with a shaky hand. Wondering why the way she said my name made my palms sweat.

"So do you do this for everyone that breaks into your house, because that might be part of the problem you know."

It was a joke, almost, because some part of me wanted to believe that she wouldn't and I felt so incredibly foolish because of it that I could barely look her in the eye. I had been so brazen not so long ago when I had broken into her house. I was cocky and confident and my hands were dry. Yet with just a few words, a well placed uppercut, and one almost smile, she had surreptitiously undone me. That scared the shit out of me way more than the wards had.

"Well no. It's easier just to kill them usually."

I laughed. Only her eyes hinted that she had been joking. Everything about her was an undercurrent, a fantom of the gestures that most people would have. She bit her lip in a surprisingly human display of nervousness.

" I like you, Eve Levine"

It was then that I noticed. I hadn't felt this stupid, sweaty and red since, well since before I'd gotten pregnant with Savannah. Suddenly I was no longer in fear of my life, no I was absolutely petrified about what my hair looked like and if my breath smelled. Which was all ridiculous because she was a woman. I never cared what any of the conven witches thought of me and yet I was agonizing over a relative stranger. She placed her hand on my knee with no warning, no hesitation. It was just there as if this were a common occurrence between us.

"So, how are we going to call this even, Eve Levine?"

It could have been the coffee or my imagination, the blood loss from my fracture, but I could have sworn on anything that her eyes were epoxied to my mouth.

"Dinner."

She raised an eyebrow and her hand slid off my knee. She rose and waltzed over to the bookshelf where the grimoire rested in plain sight and she handed it to me.

"I-"

"Finish your coffee, there's pastries to go with your reading"

I felt ashamed. I was going to take the book from her and now I could barely bring myself to touch the gilded cover. Mirella brought her hand to rest atop mine, our fingers intertwined sprawled over the gilded calligraphy letters.

"Things happen Eve."

She stood up then and got pastries from the kitchen. I opened the book, it was entirely handwritten and beautiful with drawings on all the introductory pages. I almost lost myself in it until she sat down next to me, and leaned back into the sofa helping herself to a Napoleon.

"If you have questions...or need something to make notes?"

I nodded and stuffed half a croissant in my mouth. If she'd wanted to kill me I would've been dead by now. She let me read without any interruptions aside from her feet gliding across the floor and the sound of a record player needle being set. Blues. That Italian accent of hers seemed so at odds with Robert Johnson's guitar, the acme of Americana, that I almost didn't register her question.

"How old is your daughter?"

"Excuse me?"

She paused. "When you saw the shoes by the door you had a look on your face."

I'd almost turned back because they were red and white Converses two sizes too small to belong to a woman and I had to remind myself that no one was home. Because I felt my gut crunch at the thought of someone Savannah's age living in the apartment. That didn't mean I wanted to talk about it though.

"You know where I live Eve, where my daughter keeps her dirty shoes."

In other words we were even.

" Around the same age as the girl in the picture."

She smiled. And them something else flashed across her face. She stuffed it down, quickly, quietly, choosing her words before she spoke. ''If she was here..''

''You would've kill me.''

She nodded. I wasn't offended by her honesty or confession of a zero tolernace policy for intruders when her daughter was home. I respected it. Mirella was deadly in her own right but she was fair, an adjective I wasn't sure I could use to describe myself.

''I hope the music isn't too, mn, too much.''

''It's perfect.''

I sat there pouring over her grimoire until half my ass was asleep and she had to turn on one of the lamps next to the sofa. It was odd company, the two of us, victim and intruder reading and making notes like two teenagers studying for finals. Inbetween the spells and notes on potions I glanced at her, only long enough to catch the furrow of a brow or the scratch of a pencil. When both my feet were officially asleep curled beneath me, she walked over and sat perched on the arm of the sofa.

"Not that one, but I have one, a good grimoire you can borrow until our dinnner.''

''How do you know you can trust me?''

She shrugged. "I don't. But it's a risk I can afford to take.''

At the door she left me with a different grimoire, a sample-sized shampoo bottle filled with salve for my nose, and a goodnight Eve Levine punctuated with a hint of a smile before she closed the door.


	2. Chapter 2

**I can only claim Mirella and any other original characters; Eve Levine and all other Otherworld characters belong to the talented Kelley Armstrong.**

"Mirella is this a date?"

"Why? Does it feel like a date?"

Mirella knew perfectly well why it felt like one, or at least in theory she should have. We were sitting in a restaurant that was well out of our price range with only a bottle of Malbec and a fucking monogramed napkin between me and my absolutely not out on a date with, it's one hundred percent platonic what was the word the waiter had used? Lady friend. That's right my lady friend.

"You tell me, you're the one wearing a tight leopard print dress. "

For all my snarkiness I wasn't fairing much better, because a leather miniskirt and a pair of heels that I'd almost killed myself in were not really helping my cause at all. Neither was the fact that I just so happened to be wearing an obscenely sexy, black lace something or other thong from the semi annual sale at Victoria's secret that had made my twenty-minute subway ride cruel and unusual punishment with the way it kept riding up.

"It's ocelot print."

"Mirella I think you're missing the point here."

"It figures you'd accuse me of that particular indiscretion."

"Don't change the subject."

Mirella raised her eyebrow in that strangely elegant sexy way she did right before she had fractured my nose on principle for breaking into her apartment. And if I thought it was sexy I was merely appreciating her features on an artistic level. That little flip in my stomach was nothing. Or maybe gas? Yes, Eve Levine was not suffering from a sexual identity crisis because this all boiled down to an acute case of flatulence. All I needed was some Maalox and the looks Mirella was shooting at me over her wine glass would dissipate into nothing. The way I watched the way her fingers flexed, the curve of her neck. The way I watched her walk into that restaurant in that dress and how it had made me want to puke into the ridiculous sequined evening bag I'd brought with me, because goddamnit I felt as nervous as a 12 year old boy hiding in the bathroom with his mom's Victoria's Secret catalogue while his older sister screamed about needing the shower. So I did what any reasonable person would do, I drank.

"Do you want it to be, Eve?

"What?"

"A date, do you want this to be a date."

I answered her, honestly. "I don't know"

She shrugged.

"I think you're having some kind of allergy problems, your face is red."

I felt my neck sweat. She noticed everything, even when I'd had coffee in her apartment following my failed break-in attempt, I felt like Mirella's gaze was stronger than a fucking electron microscope.

"I, it's not allergies it's you actually. You make me red and nauseous. Like I need Tums and a vodka soda all at once."

She raised her eyebrow. It had been a shamefully long time since I'd been on a date, but I foolishly assumed that I could handle what had become a defacto lesbian outing. Apparently not.

"I mean in a good way."

"Your bedroom talk needs work Eve."

I rolled my eyes.

"Not all of us can have European accents Mirella, you could sit here and talk about tampon absorbency and it would still sound sexy."

Because she took her time with her words. They were precise and packaged even if they weren't always pronounced correctly. They were elegant. She was the perfect balancing force to everything I associated myself with. She was hard in places I was soft and vice versa. Because I liked the way my name sounded. It stayed there, the v sleepily resting against the roof of her mouth. She smiled at my comment, an easy soft smile, but there was a glint to it.

"Ah, so now I sound sexy."

That comment resulted in a lung full of Malbec and ten seconds of loud awkward coughing.

"Listen Eve maybe I'm lucky because I've gotten to a point I think, in my life, where I don't have any problems admitting that I'm attracted to you. Ten years ago, I would've done some self flagellation over it. But you're alluring, and I'm unattached. I don't see why it has to be complicated. You have nothing to be nervous about. This, it's just wine and food, nice dresses and- "

she shot a cursory glance at my attire "low cut silk blouses. We don't have to call this a date if that word is going to make you dry heave all night."

My shoulders loosened and I relaxed.

"What kind of flagellation?"

She played with the edge of the water glass before she spoke.

''The kind that comes from obsessing all the time about what everyone else would think. I almost did it so long that I started to forget what I was like before everything.''

I'd be lying if I said that I naturally exited the womb not giving a damn about what other people thought about me, but the truth was that at one point I had. It was always dicey, juggling what you wanted to be with what people expected from you. A war of attrition that left behind a lot of collateral damage, regardless of the winner.

"What changed?"

"You can't tell your child to be themselves at any cost, when you're letting other people, strangers, run you."

Mirella was fortunate, she was most likely skirting around her covens rules, tight roping on a razor thin blade like I'd been but the difference was she was doing it without appearing to break a sweat. With blood wards, and sexual tension directed towards female cat burglars.

"So whats you're deal. The background I ran on you wasn't very telling. Average coven, way below your skill level if you ask me, and they aren't exactly making a ton of social calls."  
The last part was an understatement. From some of my contacts I'd learned that Mirella was the odd woman out. You'd think a group who is all about the protection of women, and feminine bonding would be less judgemental. But people have a way of transforming when they feel threatened.

"You tell me. Eve Levine"

"You're Italian."

"Mostly."

"But blood wards, not even Italian covens do them."

Her lips twitched. ''That's more than what 98% of our colleagues know. Go on.''

She was going to make me work this out. It had been awhile since I was faced with someone who offered me challenge. In the mediterreanean region Greece, Italy, and Albania had the longest history of spell casting but predictably Greece held on to the ancient rites and had a distinct dislike of latin spell books. The glimpse I'd had of Mirella's library quickly ruled out that possibility. Everything about her magic spoke of isolation, spells and practices that probably hadn't had revisions in centuries which really only left me with one option. ''Albanian.''

She smiled. "Order me the lamb" she stood just then, barely pushing the chair out, and as I watched her back I saw it there. The dress had a plunging, barely there back and I could see it etched out in sprawling ink over her tanned skin. I closed my eyes and tried to force away the sounds of bread baskets and wine bottles. I touched the back of my palm and the image was clear as day. I was tracing every inky outline, her back bare to me. And I just traced, my imagination filling in the gaps that her dress had left veiled in fabric. This time the whole design was there and I started from Mirella's shoulder to the top of her thigh. Eve. In that drawn out way of hers. My fingers moving back her hair. It was so simple, benign, Disney rated compared to the thoughts I'd had about Kristoff or anyone else I'd been attracted to. But Mirella's appearance with that quiet boldness of hers made it seem so illicit that she found me sitting there at the table flushed and mute.

"Eve?"

I reached across the table and lightly touched her wrist.

"Mirella, I think this is a date, but I need to go slow. "

"Anything you want Eve."

The rest of our dinner was surprisingly normal. I didn't know what going on a date with a woman, this woman who I'd tried to rob would be like. We talked about our kids, how we grew up. She made me laugh. Mirella had a strange sense of humor and she didn't change her affect but she made me laugh in that odd way of hers. When the check came I swiped it from her and there was no protest no objections just a gleaming smile and a tap to my shoulder.

"Desserts on me Eve."

I was doing relatively fine until she said that, then my head started swimming worse than my first hangover when I was 16. I followed her out of the restaurant and she touched the small of my back.

"Eve, I'm not going to maul you on the street. I'd like to, But I promised you slow, yes?"

"Right, but slow is relative Mirella."

"Mn it is isn't it."

That's what I'd been afraid of. What her version of slow was. Yet all the same I was so curious that it went against any desire for self preservation. It was also one of the better dates I'd been on. We went to her apartment.

The kiss happened in the kitchen. Her heels had long been kicked off and banished to a corner behind the couch and I could still feel the champagne effervescent in the tip of my nose. And it was nothing like a movie no cheesiness or hesitations, because Mirella was as she always is: subtle and explosive. And the non-kiss happened in the very spot right there next to the toaster; the natural pause in a sentence. For the life of me I couldn't tell you who'd started it. But it really didn't matter, because I'd remembered the important things: what it was like to feel the edge of the counter at my back, and the arching of my feet, the humming in my chest, and nothing else.

"I like your version of slow Eve Levine ."

I smiled.

"I was planning to make you dessert but getting naked might be less trouble."

I laughed, her face was serious but with Mirella all her jokes were in her eyes. She was a master at being feciscous. I propped myself up on the counter and just watched her. She was fascinating for no obvious reason. I watched the way she walked, the way she bit her lip while she was waiting for the stove to light. And then I went to work, and we made dessert in amicable silence. I made coffee as my contribution and as elegant as Mirella was there was no candlelit living room with acoustic music and roses. She handed me my food and my paper napkin and we sat side by side on her kitchen counter sharing a plate of sautéed pears with chocolate and honey.

"What no mood lighting?"

She stole a piece of food from my side of the plate.

"I didn't think it was your style. You like, honesty. For things to happen organically, even if that would ruin a fantasy."

"I think you're right."

She shrugged "I'm always right."

"Can I ask you something?"

She nodded and drank the rest of her coffee like a vodka shot. For some reason I was embarrassed by my own question. I was afraid of it. Of letting any inkling of what I had imagined in the restaurant out. That image had become so personal that I felt my face heat up at the thought of just mentioning it.

"The tattoo on your back, what is it exactly, the whole thing I mean."

"Come look."

And she stood in front of me and held her hair back, away from her zipper, wordlessly giving me all the permission needed. Yet I hesitated, I stared at that tiny black metal monster and held it between my fingers until the YKK mark was all but tattooed to my thumb. Then I dove in and pulled. She shrugged out of the straps until they rested in the creases of her elbows. The bulk of it was on her side with the wings spilling out onto her back. Some type of bird, the type you'd see on a flag. There were other things, a paragraph in Cyrillic, an odd looking symbol. I didn't analyze them, I memorized them with my eyes the tips of my fingers, my palm. Lips. I committed all of them to memory and I traced and drew invisible lines between her shoulder blades. Eve. And she said my name like I'd imagined she would. Eve. In that drawn out way of hers. And I traced and traced until the fabric slipped away. And then I walked to stand in front of her, the buzzing kitchen light overhead as my own metronome. We said nothing. But then the kissing and everything.

Fingers, hair, tattoos, scars. May I? Can I? And I should've known that Mirella would be in charge of everything. But I didn't give a shit that she'd played she knew I was going to end up like this, in her kitchen, reflected on her microwave door crazy and breathless. Because she had to have known. She had to know when she handed me that pastel paper towel and the grimoire that she was going to burn me up inside out. 600 Kelvin. 1000 watts. She knew. When she made me coffee, when she did every goddamn thing she did. The soy milk sugar espresso Malbec.

All of it was purposeful, she knew I'd follow her to her room that I'd stop and touch the wall on the way there and let her take my heels off. That I'd stop hearing the lights and the sirens but I'd never stop feeling that electrical undercurrent that made my blood vessels feel on the verge of bursting. That I'd be completely vulnerable and say her name and not care what I looked like. That in the end I'd almost laugh at the irony that my idea of going slow meant spending the night and whispering to no one in particular. "Slowness is relative isn't it?"

Only to be answered back with a kiss to my neck, and a bite on my ear. Drowning. The bangs brushed out of my face, hands wandering down my side. Unraveling. Pins and needles in my fingers. A breeze floating through the window, stale and smoggy. Mirella, everywhere.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Everything belongs to Kelley Armstrong save for Mirella.**

The second time I saw Mirella Karl Marsten was there. Inspite of everything I considered her a friend and thought our last meeting was some kind of fluke.

It hadn't been. She greeted me with a kiss and I lost track of myself, I was that Eve one with champagne for brains unzipping a dress in someone else's kitchen. The Eve with matted hair and smudged mascara.

"I see you missed me."

"I-"

"You pick the strangest times to be shy Eve Levine."

"I'm blushing like an idiot aren't I?"

She smiled, brightly. The smile that made me remember why I still couldn't sleep with the windows open without thinking about her. Without wondering if Mirella was still in that apartment of hers letting her fingers wander down someone else's arm.

"A sexy idiot, but, yes."

She placed her hand on the small of my back, guiding me as always.

On anyone else her dress probably would've been considered obscene. The front was sleeveless yet conservative with a high collar and a questionable hemline but the back was another story. Below the collar buttons everything was open and exposed. Tattoos curves of muscles small scars. It was the part of her I was mesmerized by, that otherwise insignificant region between her neck and hips had me transfixed since we had dinner together and she hadn't forgotten a millisecond of it. My heels stopped clicking.

"We're not friends Eve."

I knew she'd say something. Mirella let nothing go, and of course she blurted out what I'd been thinking.

"Unless of course, you use your mouth like that with all of your friends."

"I don't." This was the first time this was happening to me, on this level. I'd blushed before, looked a little too long maybe but this was nothing like that. "You make my brain implode."

"When exactly?"

And I could feel my blood vessels gasping, panting, bursting.

"Always."

And then I shut the fuck up because she was kissing me. And the carefulness had all but eroded. I was left with that honeyed vibrant throbbing in my brain. And I could fool myself into thinking I had control until I felt teeth and the stupid wash instructions tag of my skirt scratching my thigh on its assent. And I kissed back. Plastered my hands to her hips, her back, vigorously knowingly. I was in her room again with all those familiar noises creeping back up my throat.

"I wouldn't have bothered you if I knew you were having a snack ."

She pulled away gently, like we hadn't just gotten cock blocked. I wiped the sides of my mouth to avoid looking like I was playing dress up with my mom's Mary Kay stash.

"Karl, this is my date, Eve. Karl is my favorite recurring pain in the ass. He told me about the job."

He smiled. And I didn't miss the way she called me her date. Karl raised his eyebrow at me and I followed his eyes to my skirt precariously hiked up to around where my underwear should be. Somehow I'd missed that one.

"Nice legs, I can see why you ditched me now."

She smiled.

"Shall we?"

We were escorted by Karl to some ridiculous, luxury monster of a car. He opened the doors for us. Mirella rode shot gun while I was relegated to the kids' spot in the back seat.

"She's been briefed Karl."

His eyes caught mine in the rear-view mirror.

"What are you anyway?"

I could sense werewolf all over him. It surprised me that Mirella was getting jobs from a mutt but there was a familiarity between the two of them.

"I see someone still hasn't been socialized."

His eyes crinkled just slightly. And we were off. The job was simple enough, nicking a few artifacts during an uppity dinner party was child's play. Mirella and Karl could have easily been in and out in five minutes. She didn't need me there and we both knew it.

Inside her tattoos were replaced by a gold silk jacket. I escorted her to the back of the ballroom while Karl did a round of security checks pilfering brooches and rings on his way.

"You don't need me here."

"No."

We were so close to something. She wanted me to say it. To take some initiative in this odd thing we'd carved out of an almost friendship.

"But you would come for a job, wouldn't you?"

My hand snaked beneath her jacket. She didn't think I'd stop by for a social call. I couldn't blame her. I was fidgety and flippant, because Mirella scared me shitless at times. She'd ignited something in me and even just letting my thumb rub across the seam of her dress made my mouth run dry.

"I.."

"Don't worry about it Eve."

But I did. She gave me a weak smile and we finished the job without a hitch and piled into Karl's car in silence. I looked out the window until we drove to a neon-lit McDonald's in Brooklyn somewhere. Karl started dividing the money all fresh piney scented bills of our first installment. The rest would come after he auctioned off the artifacts.

"So where are you staying Eve?"

Her voice was almost lost in the sound of Karl's thumb separating the bills. He immediately stopped counting. Turning around to stare me down. Mirella put a hand on his shoulder.

"The money Karl."

"You still live in Gravesend don't you?"

He was still watching me. He could probably see the words crawl up from my larynx. Without saying a single word he made me feel like an asshole. The count started and I was handed a crisp envelope.

"The N station is fine Karl, we could use the air."

She kissed him on the cheek and glided out of the car.

"Don't fuck this up Eve."

I got out the car and we climbed up the rickety stairs to the N train. Mirella slipped her jacket around my shoulders before she dove in her purse for two metro cards. I held out my hand a kid waiting for candy. She didn't speak until we were alone in the middle car, assaulted by the sherbet plastic seats.

"This situation, I made you uncomfortable"

"You didn't, I did Mirella."

I looked at her, still impossibly gorgeous in the train's ugly macaroni-and-cheese colored fluorescent lights.

She leaned her head back against an ad about teen pregnancies, her hair fanning out around a blonde girl trying to hide her baby bump with a chemistry textbook.

"I just want you to live in the moment Eve, just when you're together with me."

"And then sometimes you don't." Because sometimes I was stupid enough to think about dating her. Our lives just wouldn't allow for that, we had too much baggage and distance. But I could still feel myself getting carried away the way you do when you're a kid and you swear up and down you'll marry the boy who gave you a construction-paper valentine.

"What are you thinking about Eve Levine?"

I leaned forward and kissed her. I nearly missed her mouth because the train was so jerky and the lights kept flickering but I'd still managed. Up until that point, when a scratchy voiced read out New Utrecht Avenue and an empty soda can brushed against my toe, Mirella had always been the one to kiss me. But this time I kissed her. I was the one leaning in so close I could feel her earrings brushing up against my neck as she moved. It was soft until I realized that all of this might not be here at some point. And then it was faster and her jacket kept slipping off my shoulders. A part of me was worried almost, that she could disappear at any moment, and I'd be left to face a wall of empty seats. The conductor's staticky announcements. From here all the way to wherever this train stopped. Horny and alone with the industrial strength air conditioning flash freezing the back of my neck. She must have felt that way too because we missed her stop and she said we'd have to walk eight blocks in the dark. The salt in the air made the ends of her hair frizz and everything smelled like lo-mein.

"You have tetanus shots?"

Her words fell out onto the sidewalk as she unstrapped her heels.

I did the same giving myself a mental pat on the back for memorizing her neighborhood during my failed attempt at breaking and entering.

"Maybe ."

Her mouth twitched and on three she took off. Mirella was fast, fluid. All lithe muscle. We raced each other to her apartment our dress shoes beating out a rhythm from where they were slung across our shoulders. We tried to outrun all that baggage, the awkwardness insecurity. The emotional mess we'd left all over Karl's backseat. To do that new age carpe diem zen shit. The streets were ours. No one stopped. I could hear our breathing, the sound of muscles being worked over. Bare feet rounding corners. We got to the building at the same time, our soles slapping the stairs in tandem. My dress was unzipped before her key slipped in the lock.

Intoxicated from adrenaline, when we got inside we barely made it past the threshold. This time I'd started it, the leaning in, the kissing. Her back pressed against the just-slammed-shut door. The back of her palm rattling the chain lock. We were a beautiful out-of-breath mess. And my head felt cottony from her perfume and the outside air so dense and humid it still clung to me in layers. Like Mirella. Like the sound of the chain rattling in sync to her breathing. In sync to my hands trying to push her dress up but it was too damn tight and I was too damn wired for it. And when had the lights turned on? So many layers were coming apart. Construction paper ornaments falling to the floor in pastel pieces when the cheap glue dried up. Layers of Brooklyn, of worried silk sequins, a dress with the price tag still on littering the floor. And we tried to maneuver and failed sending everything on the side table clanking to the floor. And I don't think no I swear that no one had ever put their hands through my hair like that. Like they were trying to fucking read every single thought I had left inside of me. Like they had some kind of craving and nothing was enough nothing was helping. No one had ever-

"Eve Levine" used my first and last name. Had Jesus Christ. When did it become my turn? When did I end up here again? Again giving up control on the right side of the bed with the alarm clock's red digits reflecting across my arm.

At the end we couldn't sleep my fingers kept getting glued to the faded scar on her shoulder.

"Who's her father?"

I knew it wasn't any of my damn business. But there my words were embroidered into her side of the pillow. Because truth be told I couldn't imagine the type of person Mirella would date even if I was technically one of them. I couldn't conjure up an image of someone who'd truly matched her or was her equal. I couldn't think of why he'd leave. It wasn't uncommon by any stretch for witches to be single mothers long before it became en vogue, but with her I didn't think that had been the case.

"Someone I got too carried away with."

It was a story I was all too familiar with. And I could feel Kristoff's hand snake around my waist as soon as she said it.

"How old were you?"

She shifted to lay on her stomach and I could feel dawn scratching at the curtains.

"Not old enough to realize how stupid I was."

"Ah, a teenager then."

She laughed. It was small. Closer to a puff of air that she accidentally let slip through her teeth than a full fledged laugh. But I still heard it, I still saw the way it made her shoulders shift. Still felt what it was doing to my stomach.

"Yes," one of her famous pauses and then her fingers were skating down the sheets almost afraid to close the white linen gap between us before she settled on drumming a beat on my wrist. Her thumb tapping against my pulse.

"There wasn't a fight. When I was pregnant he just, faded. Slowly. Quiet"

I opened my mouth to say something but she didn't let me. She dragged my wrist to her mouth and then it was my neck my collarbone. And I felt myself sinking again, my head cotton candy light and drunk from anticipation.

"You can call for anything Mirella. Even when it's not a job."

What scared me the most, what made me want to shrink down to a purely molecular level and slot myself in between the threads of the sheets, what made me willing to pay almost anything but my first born to take those words back was that I actually meant them.

"You too, Eve.''


End file.
